Quoting Gertrude Stein

Here she comes again! Gertie is back in print. Amazon (at least) is freshly restocked with copies (at the original price, $ 15.95!) and you can have a look inside the book. Well, you got a good look already from the illustrations of my blog: you get the idea. It’s Gertie’s whole lifetime, from birth to death, from obscurity to fame… And there is a lot of Alice, too. And Paris. And Picasso. And everybody who was anybody.
A picture-reader: to make it fun and easy to access the elusive genius. A primer: so you can thumb around in it and get a good laugh (and a few dynamite quotes). And perhaps decide which side of her, which text of hers, might warrant or tempt a second look. I can sit back and put my feet up for a moment. This has been hard work, getting an out-of-print book back into print, especially in today’s market. I will tell you more about it when I have caught my breath…
Stay tuned.

“I don’t care to say whether I’m greater than Shakespeare, and he’s dead and can’t say whether he’s greater than I am. Time will tell.” (Lecture at Wesleyan University, 1935)

What’s all the fuss about?
When Stein went on her lecture tour, 75 years ago, she was so famous in America, so lionized by the press, that the proverbial man in the street recognized her. People were puzzled and amused and they all quoted her. Today, if you put a Google Alert on Gertrude Stein, they still quote her. From pop divas to politicians, from tennis stars to outliers. Everyone is quoting her, every day of the year, and Google is there to keep track.
If she is relevant to droves of people who never read her, how much more so would she be if one knew what the fuss was all about. It’s certainly not just the one-liners and aphorisms and pronouncements about her genius. The woman has enough presence to outlast centuries. If you would see her today in this leopard hat and army coat, sitting in one of the notorious Paris cafés, La Coupole or Le Dôme, she would still be the center of attention, the essence of cool. Her presence (of mind), so utterly unencumbered by the demands of femininity would still be striking. And intriguing. How did she do it? How did she get this way? That’s part of what it’s all about.

To eat or not to eat — to read or not to read?
Why bother reading Gertrude Stein? It’s a good question. You can make it hard on yourself (as I often did at first) by starting on the wrong foot. Picking her “cubist” or “abstract” writing first — for example “Tender Buttons” or “Stanzas in Meditation”. I am the first to admit that I didn’t know how to approach her. Reading her sometimes reminded me of the German legend of “Schlaraffenland” — the promised land of food and wine which you can only reach by first eating yourself through a massive mountain of millet. Well, I did. I had to if I wanted to find the juiciest, funniest, wittiest morsels of Stein’s Schlaraffenland for my picture-reader. On the way through the millet mountain I learned a few tricks, however. You can make it easy on yourself. You can start with her plain (well, fairly plain) autobiographical writing, and there is plenty of that, following the “Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”, or with her first novel, “Q.E. D.” the story of her first lesbian love frustrations. You can listen to Stein’s own advice: to read her aloud, which naturally makes you stop after a little while because you run out of breath. By starting and stopping a lot you may go far…
And you may notice that some of her books begin with a big burst of energy and then, somewhere in the middle, begin to sag. (“The Making of Americans” exhausted even Stein herself!) Reading aloud and skipping around can be like nibbling on all the pieces of candy in a box: delicious. You may notice how musical her language is, how amazing the “rap” of her sentences and paragraphs sounds. (She really did learn from her dog’s way of lapping water the difference between a sentence and a paragraph.) Yes, it all makes sense. It also helped me to know that as a kid, Gertie first spoke German (and heard Yiddish), then French, and only at school age, when her family settled in Oakland, CA, she fully entered the English language. Her rapport to English remained that of a five-year-old child that delights in destroying and recreating that toy of a language for her own pleasure, again and again. Her playfulness is what got me, right next to her love of the absurd and paradoxical — her punning and cunning, her naughty word games and often sexy double entendres… That’s what I wanted to share. I wanted to make it easy for everyone to play along with her. How could one resist the writer who said: “Books and food, food and books… both excellent things.”

“Pigeons on the grass alas”

Collecting photos of Gertrude Stein was an intense, year-long treasure hunt. It led to Paris libraries and private collections, to University Archives and Rare Books Libraries, press agencies and personal friends of Gertrude and Alice who were still alive. I wanted the iconic images, of course, the classics I had seen as a schoolgirl when I fell — not yet in love with her — but in awe: the famous Man Ray and Cecil Beaton shots. But I also particularly wanted the unknown, never before published images as well as photos that showed unusual aspects of Stein’s personality –the seductive young student, giggling with her nephew; playing tennis with brother Leo; wrestling with her dog; the author who famously claimed, “Work is something I cannot do,” raking and harvesting her tomatoes at her country house. I even found the probably one and only photograph that shows Gertrude and Alice tenderly touching in public. It was a series of surprises and unexpected discoveries. Who would have thought that among the many genres of writing Stein played with, there would even be a ballet? “The Wedding Bouquet” was Stein’s corky version of “Giselle,” performed in 1937 with Margot Fonteyn, at Sadler’s Wells. Little by little I felt that a full-life portrait was emerging. But one aspect was missing. There had to be a reflection of the world around her — from her birthplace in Allegheny, Pennsylvania to Oakland and its “there there”, to Paris with its cafés and Picasso’s atelier, with visits to Florence and New York (where a shop window played off the Broadway opening of her opera “Four Saints in Three Act” by displaying its fashion clothes as “4 Suits in 2 Acts”.)
While I was collecting the photos, trying to date them and get permission for their use (writing innumerable letters pleading for lower fees), I finally turned into a serious Stein reader…
Stay tuned.

“If not why not.”

I talked about the intriguing androgynous qualities of Gertrude and her “bearded Lady” before. In this photo Gert, Alice and a friend amuse themselves at a country fair near their country house (captured by Sam Steward). Would you have imagined that the “High Priestess of Modernism” was a good shot? She was. Having grown up in the California wilderness with three older brothers and without much parental supervision, she was an incurable tomboy. Interestingly, the latest New York Review of Books picks up this thread in an article on “Florence 1900: The Quest for Arcadia.” The book review mentions that Leo and Gertrude, who liked to summer in the Florence, were known as “the Stein frères” — the Stein brothers. Gertrude, we learn, even went skinny-dipping in a lake, “clothed in nothing but her fat,” as a horrified witness reported…
This freedom about who she was and how she looked, no matter who was looking on, has always fascinated me as a significant symbol of her provocative non-conventionality. Which is another reason why I think my photo collection holds a lot of clues and keys to Stein’s personality. One of the many striking facets I set out to highlight is the steady, almost constant presence of Alice in the pictures. When you think of the great writers of modern times and let their image pass through your mind — let’s say Joyce, Proust, Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Hemingway… — do you see their wives, lovers, life companions in the picture with them? In almost every photograph?
How do you analyze the fact that Stein so insistently kept Alice visible right next to her (even though Alice clearly didn’t seek the spotlight and looks increasingly tired of posing as the years go on)? Does it give you pause?
And how many great writers, male or female, do you know who wrote their lover’s life story — the way Stein did when she playfully concocted her homage to Alice’s spirit and voice in “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”?
As I said, reading photographs can be as revealing as reading books…
Stay tuned.

If you still think that Alice B. Toklas was Gertrude’s “maid”, just “Wifey” like in any old heterosexual marriage pattern, think again. Many of Stein’s friends and enemies (some of them changed back and forth as the years went on) liked and admired Alice not just for the petits fours and eaux de vie she served at the salon, but also for her quick wit and pointed sarcasm. The story Gertrude dished up in “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas” — that Gertrude talked to the brilliant men while Alice talked to their wives, is just that: a funny, ironic and self-ironic yarn. It’s certainly true that Alice was Gertrude’s bodyguard in terms of keeping annoying people out of her hair. But it shows the great story teller in Stein: such a piquant, exaggerated story makes for a perfect anecdote — one that everybody would love to repeat… My late friend, Samuel M. Steward (who did the rose tattoo which you can see in my previous blog) confirmed for me what I had already read: that a number of people preferred to talk to Alice and thought (as he did) that she was brilliant. How else could Alice have been the reader, the one, all-important reader for Stein, when nobody else read and understood her?
Stay tuned.

After all the controversies we can settle back into what is “peaceful and exciting”: Gertrude’s passion for Alice and Alice’s for Gertrude. I have quoted Gertrude’s love notes to Alice. Among the few remaining love notes from Alice to Gertrude, here is one — a note with Christmas wishes.
“Les meilleurs voeux de votre femme des Etats Unis.

Melly Christmas-hubby dearest
Here we are always nearest.
You’ve got no peer. you’re the peerest
Melly Christmas wifie’s good
Hides it under a thick hood
It will be your constant food

Good baby
Is all me
To delight
With all my might
Hubby is my pleasure

Baby boy
You’re no toy
But a strong-strong husband
I dont obey
Do this you say
Well do it together and
Thats the way we obey”

All is well, belly belly well. Stay tuned.

The question was: How do you read Gertrude Stein’s writing? And how do you read her body language? There seems to be a lot of confusion.

Do you think the woman with the head of an emperor, the body of a wet-nurse and the disposition of a happy baby was frigid?
Let me quote a few lines (not even particularly ecstatic ones) from her poetry and from the private love notes Gertrude used to exchange with Alice, and then tell me whether you see Gertrude as a participant in sexual fulfillment:

“I am fondest of all of lifting belly… Lifting belly is in bed/ and the bed has been made comfortable… Lifting belly/ so high/ And aiming. Exactly and making a cow come out.”
“Question and butter./ I find the butter very good./ Lifting belly is so kind./ Lifting belly fattily.”
“How we are tight/ Glue is our delight,/ What silky, Yes milky/ dear legs all alright…”
“Mrs. is a graceful fountain and she/ plays over Mr. who is certain that Mrs. is a grateful fountain which/ means that it is grateful to/ Mr. to have Mrs. play over him. Mr. is so grateful. Dear Mrs. Lovingly yours, Mr.”
Question and butter — food for thought.